This is without a doubt, the WEIRDEST thing I've ever written.. And I've written some pretty weird things over the years. The strange and amusing and nauseating tale of Phillip, Lord of the Pants. Did I mention he's a cockroach? Because that's pretty important. He's a cockroach.

They were multi-legged pants, you see, as befits a dandy pirate cockroach lord/lady of the night.

And they possessed a most important, intriguing and revolting power: They secreted pure cockroach jelly.

I told you it was revolting.

Anyway, one day, Phillip the "Entertainer" was "entertaining" a swarm of locusts, and his pants performed their famous jell-explosion. The locusts, whose lungs were in their kneecaps[1], drowned in knee-deep cockroach slime. Phillip encountered only sticky icebergs in his subsequent quest to relieve them of their "valuables".

Sorry. It had just been too long since I used "" around a "word".

Anyway, soon the insect police came scuttling around, the scarabs of the Fuzzy Buzzing Insects. They invaded his love-palace, and confiscated all the "tools" of Phillip's most intriguing trade. They also took all of his sex toys. Each sad little sticky locust husk was bordered by a white line of moth spores, and all told, two thousand and seven locusts lost their lives in the "Sex Scandal of 2007". Tragically one year later, a similar incident would result in the "Sex Scandal of 2008". And similarly, one year after that….You get the point.

Soon after his arrest for the deaths of thousands of locusts, Lord Pantaloon, Scourge of the Seven Bra-straps was released on bail set at $5, accompanied with a notice from the judge saying, "For services rendered." Nobody quite knew what this meant.

Spider reporters found Phillip in a nearby alley, washing his mouth out. They beset him on all sides with interrogatory interrogations. He only managed to escape by re-activating his fucking weird ass pants of jelly doom. This added a further fifty insects to his death toll, an extra $50 to his bail, and an extra ten hours in the judge's chambers. Also, the spider Mafia, furious at the death of some of their family, put a huge price on Phillip's head. And not the head with the eyes, either. No sirree.

Phillip, Former Lord Pantaloon, was forced to flee the city, taking with him only the bare minimum of fifty servants and ten suitcases of his "clothes." Unfortunately for Phil-roach, the trail they were leaving was huge and was bound to be followed by the spider hit men. Phillip realised this when he turned back to see how the progression was progressively progressing, and discovered that fifteen huntsmen were only a stone's throw away. Luckily, for a cockroach, a stone's throw gave him at least two hours before the spiders caught up.

Sure enough, two hours later, the spiders caught up.

They caught sight of Phillip sitting on top of one of his suitcases, and "pounced". One can imagine their surprise when Phillip shattered underneath them. Upon further examination, they saw that Phillip had shed his exoskeleton, and buggered off somewhere else. In truth, Phillip was at this moment a stone's throw away, busy being "entertaining" for their new hospitable host.

His new host was in fact a gigantic centipede known as Madam Imaman. As a result of this, Phillip had all of his "hands" full. There was no rest for the wicked that night, as the spiders hurried to catch up with the Casanova cockroach.

The centipede was most kind, offering to take Phillip and his entourage to a nearby city wherein they could meld quietly into the undergrowth and escape the spiders of the Mafia. Phillip thought to refuse as politely as he could, but as soon as he opened his little cockroach "mouth", Madam Imaman put something in it.

And so they set off on another whirlwind adventure, with the former Lord Pantaloon being as pleasant and pleasurable as cockroach-ly possible. Because centipedes are notoriously bad at keeping their appetites to themselves, Phillip's fifty servants had been whittled down to a mere five…and these were looking rather worried on what little could be seen of their faces. After what seemed like three hours, but was only really something like one hundred and seventy nine minutes, the slowly diminishing party reached the outskirts of the small town that had been their destination. The group stopped there, and Phillip gratefully rested his jaws. Madam Imaman had grown incredibly distanced as they approached the small town (well, mentally, anyway.) and as they all rested, she moved off slightly to the side and stood there looking both impatient and slightly concerned.

Without warning, the spider huntsmen burst from the surrounding undergrowth and quickly surrounded Lord Pantaloon and his miniscule entourage.

He coughed and shuffled his many feet, and was promptly "eaten" by one of his comrades.

The Anti-Nature Arachnid Leader (ANAL) stepped slowly forward, and focused his many eyes on Phillip.

"You, Lord Phillip Pantaloon, are under-"

The spider that had eaten his companion let out a mighty belch.

ANAL shot an irritated look at the offending arachnid with five of his eight eyes. It was an odd sight.

"YOU, Lord Pantaloon, are under arrest for the murder of fifty of our spider kindred. You must come with us."

Madam Imaman coughed slightly, and ANAL seemed to remember she was there. He reached one of his hands into his pockets, and after about ten minutes of fumbling with what looked like a pencil, pulled out a small sac.

"ARGH! THAT'S NOT MEANT TO COME OUT!"

He pushed it back in hastily and pulled out a slightly larger sack with a 'k', and threw it to the Madam.

"There you are, snitch-bitch."

She sneered at him, at which she got eaten by one of ANAL's lieutenants, Best At Liking Life Sergeant (BALLS). The money was retrieved and given back to ANAL, the tight-fisted arsehole that he was.

Through all of this, Phillip was looking rather ill, and didn't even notice that his last five servants had also been eaten by BALLS.

"What do you want with me?"

"The spider-don wants a word with you. The word is 'DIE'." And ANAL pounced straight at the Lord Pantaloon, Scourge of the Seven Bra-straps. BUT!

He had not reckoned with Lord Pantaloon's PANTALOONS OF GOOEY DOOM! All of the spiders were washed away, save for ANAL and BALLS, who were swept up against a mushroom and stuck there with pure cockroach jelly. Phillip approached them quite calmly, and crouched down next to ANAL's head.

"Well now, Master ANAL. That didn't go too well, did it? You should know better than to attack a cockroach Lord in his pants. Besides, nothing you could have done would have been any good, for you see…"

He reached in his pocket, and after a few minutes of jostling and stifled vocalization, pulled out a badge in the shape of a cockroach penis, which oddly enough looked like a six pointed star.

"I am a member of the Council Of Caring Killers (COCK), and my agent name is Roach. Thus, COCK: Roach. You poor Arachnids Requiring Savage Evil (ARSE) were never a match for me."

ANAL lay there stunned. He'd never met anyone who could pronounce brackets around words. COCK: Roach saw his expression. "That's right, I can pronounce brackets around words."

And with that, Phillip, Lord of the Pantaloons and Scourge of the Seven Bra-straps, aka COCK: Roach, aka, Frilly, aka, Lord of the Pants, aka, Oh Yeah, lifted his legs and let the cockroach jelly of COCK: Roach flow.

ANAL and BALLS were drowned almost immediately, thankfully.

Phillip stood proudly in the middle of the clearing, knee deep in his own slime, hands proudly on his hip and his…. "leg".

"Whenever any member of insect society requires me, I shall be there as soon as I finish, $309 per hour, with an extra fifty for a happy ending."

And with this happy ending, we hand over our fifty gladly, and scurry away into the undergrowth so that we can have a shower, and soon.

[1] The author realises that this may or may not be biologically accurate. If not…er…they were magic locusts.

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